An approach to student-lecturer collaboration in the design of assessment criteria and standards schemes

![CDATA[The Collaboration on Assessment Criteria and Standards Scheme project (CoACSS) undertaken by the School of Education (Queensland) Australian Catholic University (ACU), is a part of a larger university wide project designed to facilitate effective moderation of assessment tasks across multiple campuses. Central to CoACSS is the belief that professional learning on the part of education students and educators leads to improved outcomes for students at all levels of education. During this project, teacher educators worked collaboratively with education students to develop an understanding of what constitutes fair and effective approaches to grading assessment through the use of criteria and standards schemes (CSS). This paper reports on the results of the initial survey and follow-up focus group interviews. A 35 item survey was developed and administered to participants at the commencement of the project period. Five scales were constructed for this instrument with Cronbach coefficient alphas that ranged from .75 to .91. Focus group interviews were then conducted after which the lecturer in each of the participating units designed a CSS taking students’ views into account. A second round of focus group interviews were conducted with the purpose being to gain student feedback on the resulting CSS. All students taking that subject were then invited to give email feedback on the CSS, and where necessary, alternations were made. The results of the initial round of the survey were used to inform focus group interviews with pre-service teachers before CSS were designed for assessment items in specific subjects they were about to study. Initial interview data indicated that although students saw the relationship between assessment items and what they were learning, used CSS in planning their assessment and to attempt self evaluation, they struggled with self evaluation, believed that feedback was insufficient and were not confident that different assessors would give them the same grade.]]